Anchors
by Daughter of Night
Summary: Cloud and Vincent, thoughts of life and family. No pairings. [First fic for a vampiric AU.]
1. Cloud

**Author's note: **This was written mostly because the plot bunny scared me into submission. Have you ever had a vampire bunny living under your desk and biting your toes when you won't write for him? If you have, you know I did the only sensible thing.

I'm not sure if and when I'll continue this. There is a longer fic in planning, but I'm having plot issues. Too many ideas that don't really fit together, that sort of thing. _-shrugs- _Maybe it'll sort itself out once I'm done with Planets' Protector.

I hope you'll like it!

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**Anchors**

**Part I – Cloud**

Cloud doesn't like having his differences pointed out to him. He knows he's not normal, even among Hunters, and there's no need for others to rub it in.

Jenova protects him from them when she can, but despite popular belief she isn't all-knowing. She can't hear all the whispers and jibes and speculations that follow him, and he will never tell her. She's been good to him, shown kindness when most Nobles would have used him, and he can't imagine using that compassion to make her fight battles that are his own. Cloud's father served her, died for her. She repaid that service by turning the young Hunter over to the one person she could count on to raise him well and protect him until he was old enough to survive on his own.

Older now, no longer naïve, Cloud knows that it was the only thing she could do for him without losing face – losing face means losing status, losing status means being questioned, and a questioned Lady soon becomes a dead one.

Vincent has been mentor, friend, blade-brother. He is the anchor Cloud needs, the one who understands what it's like to be different, the one who belongs as little as Cloud himself, the one who keeps him sane. In a world that will never welcome them, they've made a life for themselves. Pain, blood and death it cost them, but it's theirs now and no one will challenge their right to it. Jenova will give them orders, but she will not try to cage them.

Cloud doesn't miss life among the vampires. He knows what he is to them, and it is a picture as sickening as it is false. "Jenova's pet" they call him, and their disdain and fear is thick enough to choke him when he attends gatherings.

What he does miss is life in Jenova's household. Begging treats from the kitchens and sharing them with the triplets, just to see slit-pupiled eyes glow with innocent happiness. Having those same triplets call him niisan and demand he tell them stories when they won't allow anyone else inside their room. Being hugged by Jenova in private moments when she is just a mother and not a Lady. Borrowing books he's not yet learned to read because it gives him an excuse to enter Sephiroth's rooms and invade his solitude when others won't. Getting his hair ruffled for the disrespect and sometimes being invited to stay, but even when he's not there's gratitude and affection in eyes his family believe cold.

Cloud wishes there was a way to be that child again; the one that could be hidden away in private. But he's a Hunter now, the last of the Strife line, and that means he's a valuable commodity. Any contact with Jenova's House will be news among the clans. If he wants the warmth of them back, he must be willing to be paraded before the other Nobles. If he wants his old home back, he has to give Vincent up and show the world that the Strife Hunter is Jenova's property, as his ancestors have been for centuries.

He can't do that. Not to Vincent, and not to himself.

They are assassins, warriors – soldiers in a war that will never end. They kill and bleed and hurt. But they haven't forgotten how to laugh or joke or love. They are brothers, and as long as that is true, they won't part. They live and breathe violence, but breathing in time with each other brings them peace.

And they'll destroy anyone who threatens that.


	2. Vincent

**Anchors**

**Part II – Vincent**

Sometimes, when Cloud's asleep and unable to scold him for worrying over foolish things, Vincent wonders how he managed on his own. How he got through years of solitude, silence broken only by the screams of his victims, bloodlust the only craving ever sated. How he kept his mind if not his sanity under the curse of exile. He's tried, but he can't imagine going back to the loneliness if he loses Cloud. The blonde is his brother now, bound not through the blood in their veins, but through the blood they've spilled together and for each other. It's a connection deeper than bone, more valued even than a mating bond among Vincent's demonic kin.

Sometimes, he calls to mind how surprised he was when he first met Cloud, disbelieving that the frail child could be a Hunter. Then he'd stepped closer, and Cloud had been on his feet with a blade in his hand and violence in his eyes before Vincent could speak. They'd measured each other, and Vincent had been pleased to see no apology when Cloud lowered his knife. He'd gone closer still, red eyes locked with unafraid blue, and knelt to take in Cloud's scent. He had never met a Hunter in a personal situation before, but Vincent was fairly certain they did not usually breathe you in the way the boy did with him. It was almost relaxing to feel the boy's breath ghost against his skin in time with his own breathing, and his scent… Vincent had known with that first breath that the rumors of the young Strife Hunter were not exaggerated. Cloud doesn't smell like a mere Hunter. He smells of danger, death and a feral kind of innocence.

Sometimes, Vincent wonders what it is that sets Cloud apart from other Hunters, that makes him stronger, faster, _better_. And perhaps that is the real difference between Vincent and his blade-brother, the difference that is usually lost in a sea of similarities. He can hate his heritage and the demon clan who exiled him as much as he wants, but Vincent _knows_ what he is – the son of a chaos demon and a witch. Feared and loathed as he is, he's never had to doubt. Cloud knows only that his father was a Hunter. If Corin Strife knew his lover's race, he took the secret to his grave. From the moment Cloud was born and Jenova's House knew his otherness, people have wondered.

Vincent knows that Cloud doesn't think about his mother. He's learned to use the gifts his parents left him, honed them all into weapons, but he doesn't wonder why he has them, doesn't worry about what he is. In his mind he is a Hunter, and that's usually enough for both of them.

But sometimes, Vincent worries.

He knows better than most that some races are not meant to mix. It's not superstition that has outlawed offspring from matings like his parents'. Chaos and magic are volatile on their own, and forced together in a single entity they wage war, and it won't be over until they break apart and kill him. During the nights when he watches Cloud sleep, Vincent wonders if the day will come when his brother's heritage turns on him.

He hopes it won't.

Not just because Cloud is family to his magic and pack to his chaos, but because he is Vincent's brother, the one who loves him without hesitation or limitation. The one who smiles at him over their fallen enemies, the one who spars with him even when the air is crackling with wild magic. The one who curls up close at night and takes comfort in his presence. The one who taught him about the nearness of family, not of sex. Cloud has been the only good thing in his life for so long that the scent of him calms Vincent's opposing halves into grudging cooperation. That love and that almost-peace is worth more than any training he ever gave the child now grown into an equal, but he knows Cloud doesn't see it like that.

On some of these brooding nights, Vincent worries that losing Cloud – whether it's to the violence surrounding them or the inevitable passing of time – will drive him insane, send him raging through the world with claws and magic bent on destruction. On those nights, he wonders if one day he will lose control and do something even Cloud can't forgive.

But those night are growing rarer.

Vincent knows that Cloud won't turn from him voluntarily, and when death claims him, Vincent will follow. Chaos and magic are too attached to be left behind.


End file.
